Re: Dualities arising via pairs of schizophrenic objects

["Fred E.J. Linton" <fejlinton@usa.net>]

Anent Graham White's suggestions,

> Two possible names are "liminal" (from limen, a doorway), or
> "bifrontal" (from frons, which means face: one of the titles of Janus
> is Janus bifrons). I kind of like liminal, because it emphasises the
> function of the twofacedness, rather than simply the fact that the
> object is twofaced.

Perhaps "liminal" suggests two-facedness to some, but not to Merriam-
Webster ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liminal ), who believe 
it stands for

1: of or relating to a sensory threshold;
2: barely perceptible; or
3: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition :
in-between, transitional <in the liminal state between life and death —
Deborah Jowitt>. 

And never mind that "two-facedness" in common parlance has to do with
a person's being (not liminal, but) deceitful, insincere, or hypocritical.

OtOH, liminal does accept prefixes nicely, as: subliminal, supraliminal :-) .

As for "bifrontal", often one is faced (sorry :-) ) with an object having  
far more "fronts" than just two. Good old 2 = {0, 1}, for example, is: 
a set, a pointed set, a bi-pointed set, a poset, a poset with top, a poset
with bottom, a compact T2 space, a pointed compact T2 space, an abelian group,
a meet-semilattice, a frame (though others will insist I should be 
saying "locale"), a Boolean Ring, a Boolean Rng, and much much more.

Does the prefix "bi-" really adequately capture the potential of having 
all that many ... umm ... hate to use this term ... personalities?

Cheers, -- Fred "it takes two to tango" Linton,
(now [re]tiring from -- sitting out the rest of -- this year's dance)



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